In managing the efficient operation and response of call centers, such as Emergency 911 centers, there is significant value in being able to provide ways to automatically prioritize the incoming call streams by some measure of the severity of the emergency. The audio stream may be the only method of providing information. Therefore, a simple, natural and universally available mechanism, e.g., the content of the call audio stream, would be useful, to prioritize calls in a queue.
Furthermore, conferencing applications may be limited in having the ability to mix only a partial number of incoming audio streams. Thus, conferencing systems may deploy a mechanism to select a few incoming audio streams with highest energy levels, e.g., the loudest speakers. However, this mechanism can provide inaccurate results, for example, if one of the participants is calling from a noisy environment and his audio stream gets mixed for reasons other than being a loud or dominant speaker, such as background noise or voices.